


before it can abandon me

by murdershewrote



Series: mother mary [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 21:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11216478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murdershewrote/pseuds/murdershewrote
Summary: Maria cannot bear to love her baby, not when she knows he will leave her like everyone else.





	before it can abandon me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan.

Maria pops pills and washes them down with wine. She is so very tired of hurting.

Maria gives up her son to nannies and schools, because he will be taken from her eventually and better to get it over with now. It doesn’t hurt to lose what she doesn’t love, but loving is a hard habit to break. Howard is easy to abandon but other things stick no matter how hard she tries to shake them off.

 

Howard had picked the name Anthony. Maria hadn’t cared, as long as the baby wasn’t given the name of one of the honored dead. This makes it more difficult than one would think, because Maria carries so very many ghosts. Gaspare, Carolina, Oreste, Innocente, Fabio, Giuseppina, Angelo, Bruno, Carlo, Ines, Mansueto, Domizio, Sofia, Valentino, Edoardo – ancestral family names, gifted to the next generation. But none of them are alive today to watch over her baby and lend their name. Anthony is still too close to Antonio, reminding her of a young cousin who died of fever and a great-uncle who died in the war, but Maria is too tired to argue.

Anthony’s hair is dark and curly, but Maria insists his nurse keep it cut short, too often reminded of the carefree boys of her childhood with their windswept hair. Anthony could have been any one of them and Maria has trouble seeing her son’s face under the millions of faces superimposed on it, faces she can’t even name anymore.

Anthony laughs and it sounds just like his nonno, her papa, Fabio, teeth flashing and eyes crinkling. Anthony does not ask why his laughter makes his mother cry but his childish giggles cease. There is no room in this world for laughter, it is good that he learns this early.

Maria doesn’t speak Italian to Anthony and smacks him when he gestures, speaking with his hands in a way Maria used to know. Anthony does not know the dead, does not have the right to any of their legacy or mannerisms.

 

Anthony’s nurse Jarvis dies and he makes a mess of himself, sobbing even though he is far too old for tantrums. She’d tried to fire Jarvis but Anthony had made such a fuss she kept him on, knowing the pain of parting later will be so much worse. After that, Anthony never complains when the staff are rotated out yearly and he switches schools. It is better not to get attached.

Every time Anthony comes home for the holidays he returns more and more a stranger. It is a relief. He starts experimenting with drugs and Maria just tuts at a young man wasting his life, like he is someone else’s son and not her own flesh and blood. Anthony and Howard talk about engineering and weapons and Maria regards them with polite disinterest, the same way she does with any of Howard’s business associates. They are not her family. Her family is decades in the past and thousands of miles across the sea, gone but not forgotten.

 

In the end, Maria doesn’t lose Tony, but Tony loses her, on an icy December road. Tony loses her first, years before, when she watches him crying in his crib and reaches for a glass of scotch instead of a bottle of milk. They say you can’t miss what you never had but God how Tony _aches_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr.](http://murdersshewrote.tumblr.com)


End file.
